A Little Change to the Senate Filibuster Rules

“It’s some change,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a freshman Democrat from Massachusetts, said with a shrug after being asked whether the new rules went far enough.

These new rules, adopted with rare bipartisan majorities, will maybe make things move a little faster in the Senate. Maybe. They also expire in 2015. And, the New York Times reports, "Senators will still not be required to actually talk or even be anywhere near the Capitol when they filibuster a bill."

What exactly was accomplished, then?

"Some procedural changes," Jonathan Chait reports, "the gist of which will be to make it harder for the minority to tie the Senate up in knots... Basically, what happened here is that the good government instinct met the senatorial ego, and the latter prevailed because it is the most powerful force on Earth."

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